Beyond anonymity: temporality and the production of knowledge in a qualitative longitudinal study

Anonymisation processes are an embedded, if contested, element of ethical research practice. Current debates, highlighting various challenges to anonymity, suggest the importance of situated ethics and negotiated solutions. However, the strategies adopted are necessarily mediated by the researcher’s epistemological positions. Longitudinal studies with their extended timeframes and intensive research relationships tend to amplify ethical dilemmas and highlight the contingency and fluidity of ethical processes. Here we explore how temporality intersects with epistemology in a qualitative longitudinal (QL) study of organisations located in a contemporary policy context. We reflect on the confidentiality and anonymity dilemmas that develop and change over time, the strategies adopted and the implications of these for the type of knowledge produced. We suggest that QL studies entail flexibility within epistemological frameworks. These issues have particular resonance and consequences for researchers in light of contemporary pressures around public scrutiny of academic performance and wider debates around public sociology.     

Human Rights and Human Subjects: Ethics and Strategies in Social Science Research*

New guidelines implemented by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services exempt broad categories of social science research from regulation by university review boards. The analysis examines how exemption from regulation will change the way researchers manage ethical matters in the future. Social scientists will wish to protect the rights of research subjects and, at the same time, study sensitive social issues by scientific designs. As in the past, these goals will be incompatible in various ways. The analysis examines the parameters within which researchers will deal with several ethical and methodological dilemmas.     

Methodological problems and policy implications in Vietnamese refugee research

This article is written with 2 objectives: 1) to describe some of the critical methodological problems encountered in research with Vietnamese refugees in San Diego, California, about whom few studies have been conducted previous to their arrival in 1975; and 2) to discuss the policy implications of research beset with these difficulties, some of which are unique to studies of refugee populations per se, while others are common to research on small ethnic minorities in general. This article focuses on 4 major issues: 1) the quality of refugee studies, 2) the purpose and functions of such research, 3) the ethical dilemmas of studying refugees, and 4) public policy implications of refugee research. Recommendations are offered to resolve some of these issues which would call for policy changes both in the ways that refugee research is conducted and in the training of researchers themselves.     

A Practical Model for Ethical Decision Making in Issues Management and Public Relations

The deontological philosophy of Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) provides a powerful framework for the analysis of ethical dilemmas. Kant's philosophy is discussed and applied to what this research poses as the "practical model for ethical decision making" (see Figure 1). This Kantian model establishes an ethical consideration triangle and incorporates symmetrical communication. The issues management of 2 global organizations was used as an empirical test of the model and to refine it for practical implementation. I argue that rigorous analysis of ethical decisions and symmetrical communication result in ethical issues management.     

Informed Consent as Process: Problematizing Informed Consent in Organizational Ethnographies

This article examines the implications of informed consent in organizational ethnographies, where the research site is a bounded and formal institution that has its own sets of rules which govern action and membership. While there is considerable scholarship on the issue of ethics in ethnography in general, very little has been written about informed consent in organizational ethnographies where researchers often simultaneously observe managers, “studying” up according to Nadar, and employees referred to as “studying down”. Organizational researchers tend to discuss ethics in terms of obtaining informed consent for individual interviews or in terms of access to an organization as a research site. This essay examines ethical dilemmas experienced in fieldwork studying participatory work arrangements in a Mexican garment firm. By discussing practical issues of gaining access, problems of maintaining access and consent, and concerns of how gatekeeper consent affects subordinates, I problematize the practice of obtaining informed consent in organizations. I argue that thinking of informed consent as an on-going process that requires an active reflexivity on the part of the ethnographer will help researchers to navigate the ever-shifting web of power dynamics present in organizations.     

The Ethical Challenges of Field Research in Conflict Zones

Drawing on 26 months of field research in El Salvador during the civil war, I analyze some ethical challenges that confront field researchers working in conflict zones. After briefly summarizing the purpose and general methodology of my research, I discuss in detail the research procedures I followed to implement the “do no harm” ethic of empirical research. I first analyze the particular conditions of the Salvadoran civil war during the period of research. I then discuss the procedures meant to ensure that my interviews with people took place with their fully informed consent—what I understood that to mean and how I implemented it. I then turn to the procedures whereby the anonymity of those interviewed and the confidentiality of the data gathered were ensured to the extent possible. Throughout I discuss particular ethical dilemmas that I confronted, including issues of self-presentation and mistaken identity, the emotional challenges of field work in highly polarized settings (which if not well understood may lead to lapse in judgment), and my evolving questions concerning the researcher role and its limitations. I also discuss the dilemmas that arise in the dissemination of research findings and the repatriation of data.

The ugly scholar: Neocolonialism and ethical issues in international research

As a discipline, sociology has had to confront criticism of the nature and ends of sociological research and ethnical dilemmas in the study of social problems and people. Over time guidelines have appeared to aid in protecting subjects and colleagues (e.g., the ASA Code of Ethics) and to guarantee research standards (e.g., the peer-reviewed proposal process, human subjects committees). However, guidelines tend not to address the challenges sociologists face in international research. This results in unpleasant experiences and potentially endangers research and researcher alike. This articles responds to the gap in the literature on ethical issues in international research. It draws on writings by social scientists and from the author’s experience in Latin America.     

Ethical challenges in conducting research with hard to reach families

This paper reflects on some of the ethical challenges encountered by the authors whilst undertaking sensitive qualitative research with parents and children who are traditionally hard to reach. The research aimed to provide more holistic and in‐depth accounts of parenting on a low income in diverse social circumstances than already exist. The nature of the sample and the subject matter that was covered inevitably raised many familiar ethical dilemmas and some that are less often encountered in practice, particularly in relation to child protection. In this article we discuss our approach to ethics, some of the ethical challenges we encountered undertaking work with families and discuss the complexity of decision‐making around risk of harm to children. We conclude that a clear framework to avoid harm should be developed at the outset and a transparent approach to child protection issues should be used. Additional time and resources need to be incorporated at the planning stage of similar projects in order to develop appropriate methods, ensure effective decision‐making and support researchers. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Decision-making capacity: the core of self-neglect

Self-neglect in the elderly is a pervasive public health issue that affects 1.2 million elderly each year. In working with self-neglect cases, ethical issues are often raised that challenge all professionals. Professional and family's wishes to remove obstacles to the wellbeing of an elderly may be directly in opposition to the individual's wishes. The core of many ethical dilemmas resides in the question of the individual decision-making capacity. Issues surrounding decision-making capacity are complex with many confounding factors. Through case-discussion, fundamental ethical issues of decision-making capacity relating to self-neglect will be explored and strategies will be offered to resolve these dilemmas.     

Ethical Tensions and Dilemmas Experienced in a Northern Ugandan Social Work Internship

This article explores the ethical tensions and dilemmas that arose for 2 U.S. social work students during an 8-month international clinical internship in northern Uganda. These students encountered cultural differences related to issues of confidentiality, autonomy, and self-determination. Student experiences were analyzed using the cultural orientation framework of collectivism. A strategy for reflecting on ethical dilemmas that arose is presented involving identification and exploration of the ethical dilemma, reflection on the dilemma in the context of culture and socioeconomic factors, development of culturally responsive and ethical interventions, and continued review and reflection. Such exploration of culturally based value differences is needed to increase social work students' cultural competence.     

Animal Rights Talk: Moral Debate over the Internet

Messages sent over Animal Rights-Talk, an electronic mail network devoted to the discussion of issues related to the animal rights movement, were analyzed. Messages typically fell into the following categories: questions and information, discussions of philosophical issues, ethical problems associated with the treatment of particular species, the politics of the animal rights movement, problems of moral consistency, the ethics of particular uses of non-human species (e.g., meat consumption, biomedical research with animal subjects), and matters pertaining to the internal life of the network (e.g., efforts at control of perceived norm violations). Debates between animal activists and animal researchers over the network often reflected the conflicting cosmologies of scientists and animal protectionists. We argue that computer bulletin boards offer a potentially important avenue for qualitative research.     

Taxonomic Chaos in the Confused Canadian Bioethics Industry: Apres Moi la Deluge

Abstract

This paper presents a conceptual analysis of a decade-old movement in Canada to purportedly raise ethical standards in research with human subjects, even though no systematic evidence has ever been presented either that there are serious ethical problems (especially in psychological research), or that the solutions imposed by the movement would improve the ethical situation, and not harm research's fundamental epistemological enterprise. The movement began with the activities of a committee from Canada's three major government research councils, the Tri-Council Committee (TCC). Like all ideological enterprises, it provided taxonomic chaos by, for example, confusing ethics with epistemology and feelings of discomfort concerning an area of investigation with intellectual expertise about that area. It also went beyond its American counterparts by calling its proposals a code of conduct rather than guidelines, and proposing that if a so-called research participant (i.e., a subject) did not like the investigator's hypotheses, she or he could withdraw “her” or “his” data. Even after the TCC and its various bureaucratic progeny retreated (though ambiguously) from these absurd positions, there has been a maintenance of such positions as the right and responsibility of IRBs to advise not only on the ethical issue of the treatment of subjects, but also on epistemological issues of research design. These issues require not only expertise in the requisite disciplines, but also an intimate familiarity with highly specialized sub-areas. In practical terms senior researchers may be able deal with the burgeoning North American bioethics industry and ignore the anti-epistemological and implicit principles according to which the industry operates. Younger researchers, who have no memory of how research used to be conducted, will succumb, and, in an epistemological sense, be “corrupted”. As the last phrase of my title suggests, senior researchers are currently acting like France's Louis XV.     

Studying Postmodern Families: A Feminist Analysis of Ethical Tensions in Work and Family Research

Through dialogue and reflexivity, feminist researchers aim to create knowledge that is emergent from people in relationship with one another. Reflexivity is a process whereby researchers place themselves and their practices under scrutiny, acknowledging the ethical dilemmas that permeate the research process and impinge on the creation of knowledge. Guided by these tenets, we analyzed the relations among our research practices, our participants, and ourselves to understand and reduce the ethical tensions we encountered in a multimethod research project designed to investigate work and family processes. Our reflective efforts underscore both the active nature of research participants and the importance of the sociopolitical contexts within and around the research process. We make suggestions for more ethical research.     

The Moral Development of Public Relations Practitioners: A Comparison With Other Professions and Influences on Higher Quality Ethical Reasoning

This study gathered baseline data on the moral development of 118 public relations professionals. The respondents scored 7th highest among all professionals tested. They performed significantly better when the ethical dilemmas were about public relations issues than when they were not, indicating domain expertise on ethical issues. No significant differences were found between men and women, or managers and nonmanagers. There were significant correlations between moral reasoning and several variables including political ideology and fundamental/liberal religious views.     

Public Research, Private Concerns: ethical issues in the use of open-ended interviews with people who have learning difficulties

This paper is an exploration of the ethical dilemmas in open-ended interview research with people with learning difficulties. We address the possibility that research which gives voice to the experience of abuse, from the viewpoint of the victim, can itself be abusive. Such research is justified in terms of empowering, illuminating and disseminating the meaning that participants give to their lives. Yet every stage of the process raises complex ethical issues when research participants are drawn from vulnerable and powerless groups in society, and the focus for investigation can be deemed private. As a vehicle for our exploration, we reflect on our ethical dilemmas in researching the story of a young woman who has learning difficulties and has been the victim of various forms of abuse. We argue that ethical dilemmas cannot be overcome solely by Ethical Codes or even predetermined 'good practice'. They are integral to the whole research process and necessitate continuous explicit examination of decision making processes within research.     

The Aporias of Reflexivity: Standpoint,Position, and Non-normative Childhoods

In social work practice and research, both researchers and practitioners are required to be self-reflexive in order to produce authorized knowledge. In this article I examine the aporias of reflexivity, using aporia as a concept for dealing with and discussing the dilemmas, limitations, and shortcomings of reflexive methodology. To examine in a concrete and detailed way related issues involving the aporias of reflexivity, this article describes a project focused on non-normative childhoods in which reflexive research practice raised many, often highly ambiguous, questions concerning the processes of marginalization and domination as well as ethical considerations.     

Mindful Ethics: Comments on Informant-Centered Practices in Sociological Research

In this article, I introduce the concept of “mindful ethics” to describe my experiences as a feminist qualitative researcher who has confronted ethical dilemmas in my sexuality research. Mindful ethics is informed theoretically by mindful inquiry, grounded theory, ethics in practice, and ethically important moments. Mindful ethics has been useful in dealing with ethical considerations throughout all stages of my sexuality research. Shifting my attention to the takenfor-granted social contexts and circumstances surrounding informants’ life experiences has helped me deal with ethical concerns that otherwise may have resulted in harm to informants.     

Studying-Up and Studying-Across: At-Home Research of Governmental Violence Organizations

Studying the military and other security organizations is challenging for both methodological and ethical reasons. Studying these domains “at home,” literally in the researcher’s own country, complicates things even further. This article discusses these intricacies by proposing a dynamic conceptualization of the subject-object relationship in the study of the military and security in Israel. This conceptualization illuminates the effects of the dynamic positioning of the researcher in four social fields: the academic, the military-security, gender, and the ethno-national. The actual influence of these fields and their interrelations changes throughout the phases of research. We argue that when researchers and their respondents have similar ethno-national affiliation and military experiences, the dichotomous relations between them break down and give way to a dense web of expectations. This brings the researcher to maneuver between two, ostensibly contradictory, research strategies: studying-up and studying-across. The paper unpacks the complexities encapsulated in these strategies by discussing methodological and ethical dilemmas in two field studies on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict conducted by the authors.     

The need for explicit argumentation in ethical decision-making in social work

This article addresses the need for social workers' explicit argumentation in ethical decision-making, i.e. the justification offered in adopting a particular course of action with their clients. It is the main assumption of this article that social workers need to be aware and explicit of the personal and professional ideas, concepts, values, and assumptions that guide their practice. In the following sections we clarify central concepts such as argumentation and its explicitness, present a conceptual framework for analyzing ethical decisions in social work, illustrate its applicability on social work dilemmas, and discuss possible implications for social work practice and education. Finally, we recommend that social work education put emphasis on: (1) developing more awareness for inner deliberations and making these explicit and amenable for evaluation; and (2) developing specific skills for explicit argumentation in ethical decision-making.     

Ethical considerations when conducting ethnographic research in a nursing home setting

In this article I provide an overview of ethical concerns when conducting ethnographic research in nursing home settings where participants are vulnerable and submissive to authority, and I consider how particular research methodologies may benefit the participants. The focus of the article is primarily on the issues of privacy and autonomy and the relationship between the researcher and the participant. My own experiences of doing research in a nursing home will be woven throughout the article, as will the accounts of other researchers who have studied life in nursing homes. In reflecting on my work as a researcher I have come to a deeper understanding of the ethical issues involved in doing research in a nursing home and of the importance of ethically sound research.